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Published: October 9th 2008
I'm in Africa! My 6th continent! Only Antarctica left... 😊
I flew from India through Dubai. In Kolkata at the gate they had a phone where you could make local calls for free so I got to call my dad at the hotel and let him know that I made it. In Dubai I slept for a while on the floor and ate some food. Emirates Airlines has a restaurant where depending on how long your stopover is you can get a snack or meal or multiple meals for free. So I got a snack.
In Jo'burg I was basically just there for the night. I was tired from not sleeping much on the plane so I just hung out in the afternoon, talked to some of the other people there, and then went to bed early. Then on to Livingstone, Zambia in the morning.
There are 36 volunteers here total, about 20 of them arrived with me over the past 3 days. We're in 3 houses but they're all practically connected so we're all together. We get 3 meals a day, hot water, electricity (when there isn't an outage), TV, and coordinators in case we need any help. It's a really good set-up from what I can tell and I think it's going to be good!
There are medical and teaching volunteers. I'm a medical volunteer. I'm in either a clinic, home-based care, or old-peoples' home in the mornings and then in the afternoons we do a variety of community projects. I could list everything out now but I won't. I'm going to talk about each one as I do it and then if there's anything else interesting that happens or observations or anything I'll talk about that as well.
Yesterday I was in Marumba Clinic in the morning. It's the biggest clinic, but it's still small. We take blood pressure, temperature, weight, pulse, and respiratory rate after the patients check in before they go see the doctor. My internship experience with Dr. Whitcomb is helping me out! There are so many people at the clinics! They're used to waiting though because they know that it's the only way that they will get to see the doctor. Right now there are a bunch of training nurses who are just starting their clinical rotations so there were 3 of them helping the 2 of us that were there. It was too many people because we only had one BP cuff and one thermometer. Usually I think the volunteers are more necessary than we are right now. We helped teach the nurses how to take blood pressure though so that was good! It's more important for them to get experience than it is for us because they are actually going to be working here long term.
Yesterday afternoon I did building. We were plastering the outside of a new classroom at one of the schools. It was actually kind of fun! The man who was working with us was of course a lot better than us first-timers but by the end we weren't too bad. I don't like mixing cement though, it's hard to get it exactly the right consistency.
This morning I was at another clinic. I can't remember the name right now so I'll have to add it in later. It was smaller and not as busy. We did the same as yesterday until 10 but then there weren't any other patients so we left early. The whole time we were there no one saw the doctor. There are only 2 doctors that rotate between the clinics so everyone has to wait for them to show up. There are also clinical officers who are in between nurses and doctors who do most of the work.
Our schedule: We leave the house at 7:45 for all the different projects. We are dropped off between 8-8:15. We're there until around 11 or 11:15 or 11:45, really depends, and then we go back to the house for lunch. Afternoon projects from 1:45-4:30 ish and then hanging out in the evening.
More soon!
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Tosha
non-member comment
HEY WOMAN
Hey eryn, it's tosh by the way haha. I haven't commented in a while so i figured it was about time. Sounds like your still busy busy busy and having a blast. Coaching gymnastics is so much fun and i see your sister every day. Omg i needed you yesterday cause i could not figure out how to spot a tourjete half on one of the girls. We finally did but i was like i need eryn lol. Then i kept looking at your sis cause she's wearing your leo lol. Well keep haaving a great time!!!